Three years ago my trainer stitched this together this little as a reminder to me that aging doesn’t always follow a predictable path, that it is possible to slow it all down — including the fading relevance older men often feel when they can no longer throw a baseball without looking like an ex-president during one of those ceremonial first pitches.

Gold-digging [aka prostitution] has been around for the entire length and breath of human history.

The problem today, however, is that motive is no longer obvious. In fact, it’s evolved in stealth to what many consider an art form…where PhD level courses will soon be necessary to decode the tell-tale subtleties and innuendo.

~~~

POINTS OF INTEREST on GOLD-DIGGING [in general]

1] Gold diggers are such a problem in NYC, one woman has set up an agency that proclaims it will weed them out.

2] Cautious men need to know that women they’re interested in have jobs with sizable incomes [six figures is expected], be independent and live alone.

3] Successful women seek out equally successful men because, like men, they expect a “perfect 10” for their efforts.

4] “Millennial males are less likely than males of the Gen X and Boomer generations to equate romance with happiness,” says Denise Delahorne, SVP Group Strategy Director, DDB US.

5] “Overall, they [Millennial males] are a group of people who believe they are better than other people, and their own happiness and well being takes precedence over the needs of others.”

6] “Millennials overall, and Millennial men in particular, are more likely to think their own happiness is more important than the happiness of others Millennials overall, and Millennial men in particular, are also more likely to think that they deserve to be famous and hope to be famous one day.”

7] “I think we can’t lose sight of the fact that this is a generation that grew up at a time when attitudes about marriage and divorce really changed.”

8] “...we certainly can’t ignore the fact that they [Millennial men] feel that they can always get out of the marriage if they want to — and this is certainly something that we see frequently in popular culture.”

9] Millennial men are also more likely to want to have a prenuptial agreement than males of other generations (32% vs. 25% of Gen X males and 17% of Boomer males) perhaps because they are more likely to be viewing marriage as a financial/contractual arrangement as much as a romantic partnership.

10] There are five million members on SeekingArrangement. Overall, the site has 3.8 million Sugar Babies, and 12% are male: 460,000. Moreover, this is an 84% jump in male Sugar Baby membership from the start of 2014.

ACCORDING TO THE POST ARTICLE, HERE ARE 5 WAYS TO SPOT A GOLD-DIGGER

Matchmaker Janis Spindel asks ladies looking to date her high-end male clients to pen a 2,500-word bio and fill out an extensive questionnaire. Here are her five rules for spotting a gold digger:

1. A woman who is obsessed with dating a successful man — and knowing what his salary is.

2. A lack of a job is a telltale sign a woman is looking for someone to support her. “Women must have [jobs],” says Spindel. “It gives them a sense of confidence, allows them to support themselves and keeps them busy during the day.”

3. She complains about Spindel’s fee of $1,000 for a one-on-one meeting.

4. A woman who makes unreasonable demands: “If they tell me they must date a man with a plane, I say ‘Sayonara.’”

5. A lady who asks the wrong questions: “When they ask me how many homes my client has, they’re inquiring for the wrong reasons.”

COMMENTS

These points are all far too obvious, as most successful gold-diggers could pass a polygraph with flying colors.

FINAL COMMENTS

How did we get here?

Millennials say feminism is the root of the problem.

They tell me…

1] Women are waiting longer before marriage and children…so they’re no settling down.

2] They also have strong career motives, which they also expect of their mates.

3] They feel entitled to the same sexual freedom as men, which yields a new world man with a vagina.

So what’s the incentive for young women to date young men?

Nothing, really.

Unless, of course, it’s just sex, in which case they need an online alias if they want to protect their reputations and high-end jobs from blackmail and other forms of extortion.

~~~

In closing, here are some passages from my new book, Urban Dystrophy, currently selling like hotcakes on Amazon.

A FEW KEY FACTS TO MALE BABY-BOOMERS OF A CERTAIN SOCIOECONOMIC DEMOGRAPHIC

When you’re twenty-five, women who seriously date you do so for your looks, personality, education, and ability to earn (or somehow, inherit).

When you’re fifty, women who resemble the ones you dated at twenty-five (because they are twenty-five) do so for the perceived security you are able to provide them—both financial and emotional—coupled with a predisposition towards generosity.

Gold diggers flourish in big cities where there are few predators and an abundant food source. Please do not confuse the metaphor.

Watch out for three vulnerabilities they look to target—frustration, boredom, and privilege—the same ingredients necessary to transform a corporate executive with a Harvard MBA into a blackmail statistic.

It doesn’t matter how many boards you sit on, how many ex-wives you have, or how much your children love you. When everything falls apart, including your children, gold-diggers only care about your financial condition.

Remember that women interested in the likes of you operate in survival mode. While it has been postulated that some possess feelings that border on empathy—particularly towards their young, and in some instances, their spouses—survival still hinges on instinct.

You may live in a large urban area because you enjoy the culture, shopping experience, and fine dining, but you’re also a line item on someone else’s balance sheet.

Every man like you with a penchant for youth and beauty will inevitably meet a woman anxious to exploit him.

Men never grow up. If they did, gold-diggers would go extinct.

In case you’re wondering, the same rules apply to women when approaching a male member of this group. It’s a gender-neutral career path.

In exchange for a certain lifestyle, gold-diggers are prepared to barter whatever they have in exchange for whatever they don’t. While this may sound cold and calculating in the context of “love,” some of the country’s most celebrated philanthropists were once strippers, showgirls, and Pilates instructors. (No offense to Pilates instructors.)

Allow me preface this discussion with the following: I do not personally know anyone my age who looks like the individual in the above photograph.

~~~

Yesterday I was standing in the meats section of a grocery store when I noticed a man in his mid-50’s sporting what is commonly referred to as a “pot belly.”

In the upper thresholds of obesity, it most closely resembles that of a pregnant woman at full term, which is 39 weeks to 40 weeks and 6 days.

Like women in such a condition, the protuberance is surprisingly hard, and as round as a basketball at 4 times regulation size, but similar pressure.

As I stood there waiting for him to finish ordering his 22 pounds of heavily marbled red bloody meat, I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if the butcher hacked it all off in one fell swoop.

Would the man thank him?

See, if it weren’t for the Volvo-sized anomaly situated at his midsection, the balance of his anatomy would appear completely normal.

This is why people think these things.

Kids do it all the time with Legos, so stop judging.

Without formal medical analysis, I feel comfortable speculating that he and men like him suffer type-2 diabetes, impotence, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and depression, the later of which having paved the way for the aforementioned 4.

~~~

With this in mind, some people eat when they’re depressed.

Why they do this is beyond me.

When I was depressed I would run, swim, bike, and lift weights – sometimes all day – and often, night – until the demons went back to bed.

Not only was this a successful ritual, but I came out of it looking and feeling better.

Of course, this has been my ritual for the better part of my life, including all of it.

So what the hell happened to the guy next to me?

Medical Realities

After age 40, the natural reduction in testosterone means excess calories are often stored as visceral fat. We also naturally lose muscle mass as we age, the key word here being ‘naturally,’ because if you do nothing we will lose everything. This also applies to money, if this helps.

If we exercise, however, we can pretty much check that one off the list.

Unfortunately, most men don’t exercise regularly, so they lose muscle mass, and their metabolisms stop burning at a solid rate. When you lose muscle — about 1 pound per year after age 30 — your metabolism declines, and it becomes easier to gain fat, which often goes straight to the belly in men.

The Psychopathology

With these facts in mind, if a man were largely [no puns] inactive his entire life, and at age 40 his testosterone levels started to slip, he’d get hit like a bag of bricks.

Not only would he have no lean muscle mass to keep pace with the hormonal attrition, but the necessary adjustments to his lifestyle would be as tough as substituting heroin for treadmills in the mind of a junkie.

I do know a couple of large men who are big enough overall to pull it off without completely embarrassing themselves.

One of them, in particular, was a collegiate athlete with a commanding presence.

He, like Chris Christie, is an achiever with an otherwise full life.

This is rare. But in spite of their relatively healthy self-esteems, health still takes a hit. A big one.

I once heard a Bariatric surgeon say that fat is genetic, and therefore, men who are obese can’t help themselves without lap-band surgery.

At this writing he is anorexic after beating his own fat addiction.

I assume genetic includes psychiatric predispositions.

Solutions

1] Contrary to popular opinion, the first order of business is to seek guidance from a psychiatrist.

2] The second order of business is to find a good Internist who will run complete blood analysis followed by a stress EKG and heart scan.

3] Third order of business is to go back to the psychiatrist and give him or her the results. You will start from a low baseline from which you will rebuild what has been lost since childhood.

4] Your spouse will not understand any of this and in many cases pay a hit man to kill you if any of this starts to work and you rethink your living will [and marriage]. Understand that part of your therapy will involve your life choices, including your choice in mates. It’s all tied together.

5] Once you get a handle [no puns] on who you are – and as a result, what happened along the way – you will realize that while your genetics played a role in all of it, your mental health sealed the deal.

Ss I stated many times before [on this blog], wealthy women prefer to date their financial equals and those withing a few years of their age.

Men? Not so much [on either count].

According to researchers at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., a new study to be published in the January 2016 edition of the peer-reviewed academic journal “Personality and Individual Differences,” validates what I have always believed, that men with more education had strong preferences for female partners who were “good looking,” “slender,” and “younger.” Some 95% of men with an advanced degree said it was “essential” that their partner was “good looking” versus 77% of those with a high school education or less, and 84% of those men said it was essential that their partner was slender versus just 12% of those with a high school education or less.

So what does it all mean?

A depressing confirmation of the worst gender stereotypes that suggests the dating game has not progressed much in the last 100 years? And maybe 1000 if you want to get technical about it.

Using an example from the animal kingdom, “Female bower birds select males with the nicest nest, and in many insects, the female selects a male who offers her a nice gift of prey he has captured.”

Furthermore men prefer slender bodies, which are associated with youth.

As the body’s metabolism slows as one grows older and, slender physiques could represent fertility for men.

I might also add that, beyond the specter of fertility, slender women look better in Chanel and are easier to physically dominate, which is a big deal for many.

The study may help people understand why the advertising industry (and society) puts so much emphasis on women being thin. And it may also throw light on why men strive so aggressively for higher income and assertively negotiate for raises.

Their income clearly affects not only their ability to pay for dates but also their likelihood of attracting a beautiful young, slender partner who looks good in Chanel.

As we all know, men are more visual than women and women have a stronger need to be taken care of both emotionally and financially.

So people with desirable traits are in a position to be more selective.

The study found that both genders reported nearly equally that being with someone physically attractive “to them” is important, which is at least hopeful because it allows for physical imperfections — not the unattainable physical flawlessness we’re bombarded with every day in the media.

Nonetheless, I have seen men with more money than God check each and every line item and then choose the more perfect human female the planet has ever witnessed. Of course, what people want and what they actually get are two different things.
If, for example, a man wants a physically flawless woman with a warm heart, he usually gets only one of them. There’s only so much you can expect from a mating dynamic based on a cold-blooded exchange of commodities.

REAL WORLD PREFERENCES OF AFFLUENT OLDER MEN AND THE WOMEN IN THEIR LIVES:

1] Slender women are preferred because they look best in designer apparel.

2] Slender women are preferred because they look better educated, and thus, more sophisticated.

3] Slender women are preferred because they are easy to physically dominate.

4]Slender women are preferred because in more sophisticated circles, image is everything.

5] Slender women are preferred because the chances of them becoming obese down the road are far less probable.

Notice I didn’t mention anything whatsoever about character.

This is because men with money assume that women who crave it will just fall in line.

And while they appear to do just that, their reasons for doing have more to do with attracting even wealthier men who expect the same thing.

In general, the economy sucks: The jobs market is flat, the stock market [at this writing] is down over 400 points [ended the day down 276…thank God!], all major global economies are on thin ice, terrorism continues to rage, and, all the while, the old dude in the above caption couldn’t care less.

No wonder people are pissed off.

There are a select few men who live in the socioeconomic stratosphere, an invisible force field that renders them impervious to the vagaries of mortal life on earth. It is here that they are able to pick from an infinite line-up of beautiful young woman trying to gain access to the same invisible force field.

When you have enough money, nothing hobbles your lifestyle. Think $50,000,000 and above and it’s all an abstraction. At that amount, $10 million here or there is irrelevant. Start with a quarter of that amount and suddenly everything becomes a much bigger deal. Catch my drift? Ad to this the fact that beautiful young women are not driven by physical beauty as much as physical money, this begins to make sense.

In the above article, Duncan Bannatyne, 66, is 534th on the Sunday Times Rich list with an estimated net worth of $257,000,000.

His stunning young girlfriend, Nigora Whitehorn, 35, is from Uzbekistan and works as a dental treatment coordinator and has no discernible net worth.

So it all balances out as you can see.

What the take away from these and stories like it?

RICH GUYS STILL GET THE GIRLS.

Money first, love second.

Better yet, object first, human second.

Feminists are pissed off because women who marry into wealth are perceived to be prostituting themselves and somehow betraying those women who choose to tough it out in the workplace.

Young men rant about it because they loath swallowing the fact fact that their good looks and youth had been trumped by Bannatyne’s wealth and charisma.

According to one one rich guy, “At heart, we’re all still cavemen. The men want the biggest cave at the top of the hill and the women want to feel safe living in that cave at the top of the hill. The guy with the biggest cave will always get the girl.”

Yes this sucks.

But if you had that cave you wouldn’t be complaining.

Go ahead and hate on.

They don’t care a wit because they don’t have to…

Note:

According to a recent US News and World report article, there were 211,235 ultra-wealthy individuals in 2014, a 6 percent increase from a year before. That community’s combined wealth is believed to have fallen just short of $30 trillion, a 7 percent increase from 2013.

Growth in 2014 is slightly above average in terms of longer-term trends in the ultra-wealthy community. Over the past 20 year period, the group’s population has grown at an average annual rate of 4.6 percent, with wealth growing an estimated 6.7 percent each year.

This growth trend is expected to continue at least until 2040, at which time both the size of the ultra-wealthy population and their net worth “will have approximately trebled” to more than half a million individuals worth a combined $88 trillion, according to the report. The fastest growing wealth tiers are billionaires and those the report classifies as “at the bottom” — people whose worth is $30 million to $50 million.

…and don’t for one second think the ladies aren’t paying attention. At my health club, they’ve been thrown out of the parking lot for grabbing license plate numbers and running them on financial databases.

We all reach a point where we realize we are no longer in our physical prime.

We blame everyone – and everything – but ourselves.

Many of us live in denial until we start tripping over our delusions, one after the next, until we come to terms kicking and screaming.

John McEnroe comes to mind.

For him, life has always been a nightmare, which apparently hasn’t abated much to this very day.

Both talented and tempestuous, he bludgeoned his way to 17 Grand Slam titles before falling victim to the very angst that made him a champion, back when youth forgave most transgressions.

This is not where you want to be at middle age.

I’ve been an athlete – active in sports and weight training – for the vast majority of my life, and I’ve had my fair share of injuries. Most of them I’ve forgotten, some won’t let me.

Nonetheless, I still go to the gym and bust my ass: multiple dead-lifts, wall balls, crunches to failure – you get the picture – but my body doesn’t heal the way it used to.

My joints ache, my muscles are tighter, and there always some nagging injury.

It’s at these times that the thought starts to creep in my mind, “It’s not that I can’t do this, but should I?”

The simple answer is, I don’t know. No one does.

My doctor runs every test in the book and declares I’m fit to be tied, but I know that he knows it’s mixed blessings.

I’m technically healthy enough to do what I do, but I also know the recovery time will be two or three times what it was back in my 20’s – and rest will not be a casual decision, but a necessity.

There are times I leave the gym thinking I’m too exhausted even to drive home, and I’m sure the I am not alone.

We all pay a heavy price to keep up with where we were, which is our first mistake because we are no longer where we were.

60 is not 20 no matter how you spin the narrative.

This is where coming to terms with myself, my ego, and my competitive nature has been the hardest thing I’ve ever faced.

Thankfully, the school of hard knocks has finally pounded into me that as I age my self worth should not and, for the sake of sanity, cannot be tied to physical performance.

I simply cannot allow physical performance to trump inner strength.

I am only human and my youth was a fleeting stretch of life some 25 years ago, a lifetime for many pro athletes.

My advice to all of you in my age demographic [Baby Boomers] is to stay as active as your body will allow, explore new hobbies [if you don’t already have 10 or 15 like me], live a balanced life, and enjoy yourself.

While my absolute performance in certain physical endeavors may have declined with advancing years, the enjoyment of my journey, however different, is something that will never fade.

KEY POINTS TO REMEMBER

1] Beliefs about aging are sometimes more powerful than the physical changes themselves.

2] Ignore people who say things like “Why are you doing that? You’re going to hurt yourself!” It’s just projection, so, like I said, ignore it.

3] Psychological skills are a bigger part of your training than anything else.

4] Skills develop through practice, which is why people half your age can’t do many of the things you’ve been doing for years, so there’s an upside.

5] Your own performance in a given sport is relative to your age. The rest you make up in attitude.

6] Stop comparing yourself to that of 20-year-olds. Most of them won’t be even close to where you are when they grow up.

7] Be patient with yourself…and kind. Beating up on yourself is not going to somehow reverse time.

8] Hire a personal trainer if you can afford it. Having said this, I’ve learned that it’s more expensive not having one.